Houston is the fourth biggest city in the USA, and estate agent Tom Anderson is adamant that the Texan oil and gas powerhouse will soon surpass Chicago to become the third largest.

Yet although it competes with big hitters New York and Los Angeles (at number one and two respectively), the Texans have built their star city slightly differently.

“It isn’t like New York and LA because it doesn’t revolve around one district,” says Houston-born Anderson, executive vice president and partner at Martha Turner Sotheby’s in the city.

“We do have a central business district, but we have eight other ones with their own centres.”

The property options are therefore plentiful. Travelling slightly further from the geographical centre of the city doesn’t necessarily mean moving away from all the action.

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For a more laid-back and spacious choice, Mr Anderson singles out the Sugar Land and Baytown areas, as well as The Woodlands, a relatively new community located in lush forest land.

For something a little more central, there are planned mixed-use developments in the Downtown District, the city’s central business area, where the headquarters of many of the world’s oil companies are also located.

Other options are the Galleria, an upscale, mixed-use, urban development in the Uptown District and the Greenway Plaza scheme, five miles south-west of Downtown Houston.

“In those areas we cater to all price ranges. Currently there is a $17million (£9.9million) property available in the Woodlands area, for example, but prices there start from $250,000 (£145,000),” says Mr Anderson.

“£1 million as you get closer to the city buys something with traditional prestige, but if you move further out there is more space and you are likely to be able to buy a larger property with land.”

Houston’s main economy is oil and gas and the “peripheral businesses that support those industries”. It also boasts NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which back in 1970 received the famous Apollo 13 distress call after an explosion in an oxygen tank crippled the spacecraft during flight, forcing the crew to return to Earth.

Today it is the place where astronauts are trained and, along with medics from the highly regarded Texas Medical Center, they join the city’s diversified workforce.

“Houston is an entrepreneurial city – it’s a place where businesses get a start. It really is the epitome of the Texan spirit of ‘you got an idea, you build on it',” says Mr Anderson.

Other perks include no income tax and a comparatively low cost of living – $2.79 ( £1.62) on the Big Mac Index, compared with a national average of $2.99 (£1.74).

There’s also a thriving cultural scene to entertain the influx of people from countries such as Eastern Asia, the UK and Saudi Arabia.

Over the past 20 years, Houston has changed dramatically in this sense – and now, at the heart of the south, it’s a very exciting place to be.

“It takes us two days to initiate buyers into the area, to show them just a taste of what it has to offer,” says Mr Anderson. “For me, Houston has it all.”